QUICK FACTS
What it’s: Candor Chasma, a big canyon on Mars
The place it’s: Valles Marineris, the largest canyon community within the photo voltaic system
When it was shared: Aug. 14, 2025
Mars has an enormous community of canyons that stretches about 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) throughout its equator. This canyon system, known as Valles Marineris, is the biggest within the photo voltaic system, dwarfing Earth’s largest canyon, which covers 460 miles (750 km) below Greenland’s ice sheet. (Condolences to the Grand Canyon and its mere 277-mile size.)
First imaged by NASA’s Mariner 9 spacecraft in 1972, Valles Marineris has been captured by the HiRISE digicam on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter many occasions in its 19 years in orbit. Nevertheless, this geological surprise nonetheless holds many secrets and techniques.
This newest photograph, taken Could 24 and revealed final week, is of the japanese aspect of Candor Chasma, one of many largest canyons inside Valles Marineris. What it reveals may change how planetary geologists take into consideration Mars’ historical atmosphere.
Utilizing its skill to see element right down to the dimension of a kitchen desk, HiRISE produced a picture that reveals layered deposits of sediment a number of meters thick, scientists on the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory on the College of Arizona, which developed and operates the digicam, mentioned in a description of the picture. Crucially, these layers of sediment should date to after the canyon itself shaped, as a result of they seem to have been eroded, warped and bent by tectonic actions.
Associated: 32 issues on Mars that appear to be they should not be there
Mars would not have plate tectonics like Earth does. As a substitute, its crust is like one large plate, in accordance with NASA. However faults and fractures nonetheless type within the Martian crust because it cools. In contrast to Earth’s Grand Canyon, which was carved by a river, Valles Marineris — together with Candor Chasma — is assumed to have shaped by volcanic exercise, with landslides, floods and erosion later sculpting it into its current type.
In 2021, the European House Company (ESA) revealed that the ExoMars Hint Gasoline Orbiter, a collaboration between ESA and the Russian area company, had discovered water beneath the floor in Candor Chasma. It is thought that as much as 40% of the near-surface materials in Valles Marineris could possibly be water. That might make it akin to Earth’s permafrost areas in Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Siberia, the place water ice completely persists below dry soil due to the fixed low temperatures.
With its steep partitions and chaotic landscapes, Candor Chasma can be difficult for a Mars rover to discover. Nevertheless, the German House Company’s Valles Marineris Exploration mission would examine the potential for sending a swarm of autonomous rovers, crawlers and uncrewed aerial automobiles to this treacherous terrain.
For extra chic area photos, take a look at our House Photograph of the Week archives.
